


Reflections on a Heroine

by Kylenne



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Codex Entries (Dragon Age), Diary/Journal, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, Multi, POV First Person, Polyamory, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 09:57:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8707957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kylenne/pseuds/Kylenne
Summary: Collected writings by and about Gisele Surana, Heroine of Ferelden, in the form of her journal entries, essays, and commentaries by others. Listed in rough chronological order within the timeline of her universe, they span all three games and provide deeper insight into the world she inhabits and radically transformed.





	1. On Her Majesty, the Sorceress of the Grey

I have heard many things about Gisele Surana, whom custom and tales call Heroine of Ferelden. They say that she is a vain and frivolous girl who wears too much rouge and cares overmuch for her own pleasure and the company of men and women, that she has as many lovers as there are stars in the night sky. 

I say that looks can be very deceiving and do not tell the full tale. Within that small frame so artfully adorned lies hidden steel, and the heart of a lioness, one that beats for her beloved kingdom. Her beauty is well-known, but she is cunning and ambitious. She possesses a wicked intelligence and a sharp wit, but also knows the value of silence. There is a hunger for knowledge within her, in all its forms, and it is only equalled by her sense of compassion. They say she carries a spirit of Love with her, and that it has guided her all her life; such tales ring of truth, as Fereldans fondly speak of the great Battle of Denerim’s aftermath, when an exhausted Gisele brought healing to the wounded and comfort to the dying. We may know her for slaying an Old God, but her people love her for that, and that is why they defend her so fiercely. 

Those who know little of Ferelden ask how such a thing could happen here, that a mere elf–a mage–could rise to such exalted heights, defying thousands of years of law, custom, and the Chantry? The very thought is an absurdity, that an elven Circle mage could be so loved and crowned queen, even in the land of the dog lords, where absurdity is as common as mud and filth. 

To them I say, you do not know Ferelden very well. Where else could a sickly, impoverished daughter of the Denerim alienage become a prodigy of the Circle of Magi, survive a massacre, and lead a disgraced order back to glory upon her own slender shoulders? Above all else, Ferelden has always been stubborn in her intent to walk her own path, answering to no master, and in that, her queen is well-suited to rule. The blood of the Dales runs through her, after all. 

But the blood of Orlais also runs through her veins, and it runs true. For one not born to The Game, she plays it with the deftness of a bard’s subtle hand. That such a girl could rise from nothing to save a kingdom, name its king, and rule beside him within the very palace her mother and grandmother before her toiled in servitude is only proof of this. Queen Gisele may be Ferelden born, but remember that she is above all else Orlesian, with all that entails: a lover of beauty and seeker of pleasure, to be sure, but those lovely eyes are full of guile, and they are ever-watchful. Underestimate her only at your peril. 

_\- From private correspondence of the Comtesse Valère de Monferrat, Orlesian Ambassador to Ferelden, 9:33 Dragon._


	2. My Heart Bled From Stone

Although I was scarcely a girl of nineteen, and tastes may change over time, there remain certain constants within my palate, and it has been ever thus. Ever have I been drawn to those of the blade, stern and proud, with as much steel within their eyes as within their scabbards, sharpened to a razor’s edge upon the whetstone of defiance. And I have observed over the years that this is a peculiar quality of Fereldan men that, too, remains a certain constant. My beloved Duncan possessed it of a surety, though his blood was tempered by Rivaini fire. Teagan does, most certainly, to the eternal chagrin of his elder brother where I am concerned. Even Alistair, for all his easy jesting and boyish charms, shares it in some measure when he is set to purpose. 

Loghain Mac Tir was also such a man, even to my naive young eyes. "Son of the land" is the meaning of his name, in the ancient tongue of the Alamarri from which he descends. And it is altogether a fitting one, for I have come to believe in time that never has there been a man so quintessentially Fereldan as he, and perhaps never will be again.

It remains an encounter that is seared into my memory, even now, though he feigns encroaching senility rather halfheartedly and begs my forgiveness that he remembers only my beauty and not the words we exchanged. But I still remember: Loghain Mac Tir, Teyrn of Gwaren, emerged from his dour pavilion in the king’s camp, well-worn chevalier’s armor an old trophy gleaming in the sunlight even as shadows clouded his eyes. And I, a young girl but freshly Harrowed and still testing my newfound wings as I wandered freely at last from my gilded cage, trembled before this figure of legend who towered as surely as my home did within the clouds. Pallid though he was from lack of rest, he bore the weight of his responsibility with a dignity I cannot describe.

Thus the Hero of River Dane stood before me, a very real man of middle years, when he had only ever been a romantic myth from the tales of my childhood. These were not tales told in the alienage, for such things were as distant as the stars to us there; shemlen wars and intrigues were of little consequence to us, as we had not been truly free since the time of the Dales, but a child is ignorant of such truths. No, these were tales told in the thick tomes of the histories within the Circle Tower: of Ferelden’s greatest deliverer, driving back the cruel chevaliers beside the Rebel Prince, liberating this proud land from the brutal yoke of Orlesian usurpers. And I, an elven bastard of the stews of Denerim bearing an Orlesian name, devoured them as eagerly as sweets stolen from the tower kitchens. My favorite part of the tale was assuredly the most romantic: he could have had his pick of any highborn woman or man in the land, but in the end, it was told, he chose the daughter of a cabinet maker for his bride, modest in her beauty. We Orlesians are incurable romantics, of course, and even one born and raised in prosaic Ferelden such as I would weep at such a thing.

It was these old tales that swirled through my mind as I met Loghain that fateful day in Ostagar, a man at last and not a myth: stern and proud as Fereldan men are, full of steel and purpose, tall and imposing in his sense of presence. His hair was still black as a lad’s despite the fine lines of age which crept about his eyes and mouth, and this I remember distinctly. For another constant of my palate is my appreciation for beauty of a certain vintage. Some men wither upon the vine as the winter of their years approaches and frost claims them, but others only come deeper into their vintage, and Loghain was such a man, I was certain. For a moment, one all too fleeting, he was my entire world. I flush now to remember it, how I must have gazed at him sick with desire, but if he noticed he did nothing to shame me, exchanging pleasantries with me instead. I remember him as one of the precious few shemlen men I had ever known-- besides those two who fostered me and the one who brought me to that place--to afford me any measure of a lady’s respect. When he spoke admiringly of my beauty, it was not in the manner of a wolf regarding a lamb, as so many of the templars did with hungry eyes in the tower. What’s more, he complimented my skill in the same breath, praising my intellect, that he had heard much of the First Enchanter’s prized pupil and expected much of me, that the Wardens were fortunate to have one such as me within their ranks. These are not things easily forgotten for a young elven woman, regardless of what would pass between us in the end.

This, too, I will also say, as I myself have passed into myth and the tale embellished a thousand times over: I could not have known what would come to pass in the coming days. But, as surely as I am Orlesian, I am also a mage, a living bridge between an infinite world of spirit and the limits of the material, straddling the realm of the sacred and that of the profane. My mother spun falsehoods and half-truths for the gullible shemlen of the Denerim market, though I do not doubt she possessed in some measure a gift of foresight, as all elvhen once did in the days when we bowed to no one but our Creators. My sire read truth in the stars and heard it in the wind and taught her these things, as his Keeper taught him. These things are in my blood.

Still, I could not have known that this singular man would shatter my heart to the most brittle of pieces over and over again in the year to come, that he would take from me nearly everything I held dear, and that I would repay him in kind a thousand times over when all was said and done. I could not have known that this man of myth tempered in the forge of Fereldan defiance would rise to stand among the greatest of my enemies. And I certainly could not have known that despite the enmity that would define us for so long, such an enemy of mine would come to stand among my most cherished of lovers, that such stained hands would one day hold me with tenderness to make my heart ache, that it should bleed from stone for him. I could not have known that one day he would kneel and swear by ancient oaths his undying devotion to me, to defend my life with the same vehemence he once sought it, and that he would do so in the same hall where we once dueled to the death, where once he knelt in surrender when I bested him at last and he accepted a final grievous penalty that did not come in the end, despite all reason. 

Reason has seldom governed my heart, where this man is concerned.

But this, I did know, with great certainty: when I met Loghain Mac Tir that fateful day at Ostagar, I felt the world—my world—quake beneath my feet. And I knew in some manner of Knowing beyond Dalish auguries written in the stars and the whispers of spirits within the Fade that nothing would ever again be the same.

_\- Gisele Surana Arainai Theirin_


End file.
